Ironic, in a piece about luxury, sensuality, and ease, that it’s taken me so long, until 2024, to finish Trish: A Romance. The portion of the Aughts Philly dream which has remained crystalline over twenty to twenty five years— emancipation from limiting belief systems or creeds, freedom to live expressively, and, most importantly, manifestations of extreme, libertine-worthy excess— are not difficult to define or express. The difficulty in the Trish: A Romance textual journey, which began in 2009, is to render luxury, sensuality, and ease, while remaining faithful to complexities built into myself, Trish (Mary) and Tobi (Abby) as characters. Not all libertine models are complicated people; we were. Also worth noting about 2009; the last real chunk of time I spent with Abby Heller-Burnham, in the 23rd and Arch apartment (Westminster Arch), involved Trish: A Romance. I wanted to tape Abby talking about Mary, narrating their friendship, to see if I could use it. Thus, one section of the book (I thought) could be Abby-on-Mary. Didn’t work. When the tape began to roll, Abby wanted to talk about herself and her travails, which were gruesome in late-summer ’09. Abby was not a happy camper then, and all the ease, the bliss of the six, seven, eight years before were gone. As I said, I was never to interact with her in a prolonged way again.
Yet, Trish: A Romance remains, a testament to a period of time with many miracles built into it. Like the travelogue writings of Christopher Isherwood, the text dwells on a surfeit of characters who don’t just dream but live wild adventures and romances. The bizarre formality of the piece— seven sets of six sonnet-length stanzas— was invented so that the action could be conveyed in a vessel (as Mary would say) lean and mean enough to make the ride a brisk one. The miracle isn’t just in fornication and carousing— it’s the fact that said fornication and carousing was done in a spirit not just of affection but of love. At the end of the day, these are characters who love each other. This, notwithstanding the concluding revelation of the protagonist— that Trish has remained at lease partially unknowable to him. The point is, the characters in Trish: A Romance are not scallywags. They have, and notice, their own emotions. Even as accusations of self-indulgence are not necessarily misplaced. People will take Trish: A Romance not just to Christopher Isherwood but to Brett Easton-Ellis; that much sex, drugs, youthfulness, and rambunctious indulgence does form a sense of symmetry with Less Than Zero. I would only choose to say that in Trish, a sense of emotional/spiritual engagement, rather than dispossession, takes all the Philly-L.A. energy and harnesses it into a form more human, more likeable than the Easton-Ellis book. Remember: the three protagonists are all artists, creative types. La Boheme? No. Something unique, that’s just what it is. See for yourself.
For those of us born in the 70s and 80s, who lived through the Aughts in Center City and West Philadelphia, our perception of Philadelphia will always be skewered by the sexualized over and undercurrents which animated, charged, and lit the Philly arts scene on fire with sexual energy during that time. Many of us were annoyed by the misconception the media created of a not-fully-sexed Philadelphia; but we were disarmed on that level. I have said elsewhere, and it bears repeating, that if the city of Philadelphia has a sun sign it is Gemini. It's another way of saying this: Philadelphia from within looks and feels vastly different than Philadelphia seen in a cursory way or from a distance. The sultriness around our scene was warmer and more human than the scenes we had all read about in New York and L.A.: we weren’t motivated by money or prestige as such, or the desire to create and maintain images of/for ourselves. The hot blood that ran through McGlinchey’s, Dirty Frank’s, the Good Dog, and all our other hang out venues had some actual romance in it; we all went so far as to care, passionately, about other people. The Gemini twist, as ever for Philadelphia, is that if the seeds we plant ripen correctly, Philadelphia may go on record as one of the hottest scenes in the history of the arts, thus overturning a century of bad press, neglect, abuse, and widely spread misinformation, not to mention a corrupt arts-dissemination system with it.
Art and life have a way of co-mingling which can be difficult to finesse for an author. Because I dared to place her image on the cover of this book/pdf, I might as well announce what will be obvious to those who knew me and the Philly scene during the Aughts: the female protagonist of Trish is modeled on Philadelphia painter Mary Evelyn Harju. The life I built with Mary (and with the Philly Free School) was highly unusual; we were artists without being rich kid dilettantes or prestige hounds; lovers without being mutually exclusive; Penn students and graduates who went out of our way not to be academic; and human beings who tossed and turned on our own emotional waves without trying to fake balance or calm. It was a scattered life we had, and a haphazard one; but the love and affection we shared was genuine. In fact, if I have ever had a Laura or a Beatrice, it is Mary. The difference, of course, between myself and Plutarch and Dante, is that Mary and I consummated our relationship very fast. The heat we had for each other never quite let up, either. The picture on the cover here was snapped at a party thrown at Mary’s house (4325 Baltimore Avenue) in the early Aughts. That house was an experience in itself— it was filled, always, with artists, musicians, and other bohemians. On certain nights, everyone in the house would be intoxicated on something or other. Many nights I spent there, I felt as if the entire house had ascended into deep space, into some other, more spectral part of the universe than West Philadelphia. I have memories of floating down hallways and stairs. Mary was a wonderful playmate and an excellent mate in general. She was never boring. And, to the extent that I hope this piece conveys the intense electric excitement I felt in her presence, it is a reminder that these elevated feelings are always possible, even during a Great Recession. It thus, becomes the Gemini stare of Philadelphia down the barrel of a shotgun.
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